Juan Cole

Zarqawi Killed in Baquba Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced Thursday morning that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been killed, along with 7 aides, in a US airstrike. [Early press reports incorrecting reported the death came in a gun battle with US and Iraqi troops at Baqubah]. Zarqawi had been a significant leader of the Salafi Jihadi […]

Maliki Names Security Officials 27 dead in Civil War Violence Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki broke a nearly 6-month deadlock on fully forming a new government by naming three key security officials, who will be presented to parliament now that there is consensus about their acceptability among the four major parties. I suspect that Maliki’s release […]

Interview with Iraqi Speaker of the House The USG Open Source Center translates an important interview with Iraq’s Sunni Arab speaker of the parliament. ‘Speaker On Government Formation, Security, Sectariansim, Militias, Other IssuesInterview by Amir Ali al-Hassun with Representative Council Speaker Mahmud al-Mashhadani Al-Bayyinah Thursday, June 8, 2006 T06:57:47Z For the first time in Iraq’s […]

Iraqi Civil War leaves 22 Dead Iraqi Islamic Party Charges US with Massacres In the continuing Iraqi Horror Picture Show, police found 9 heads along a road at Hadid in Diyala on Tuesday, wrapped in plastic and stuffed in fruit cases. Guerrillas also targeted a funeral procession in southeast Baghdad with a car bomb, killing […]

50 Kidnapped Violently AMS Pulls out of Reconciliation Conference Megan Stack* poignantly describes the scene where 50 Iraqis were brazenly kidnapped by men in camouflage uniforms at a bus station in Baghdad on Monday. The wealthy among them will be identified and held for ransom. Some persons kidnapped eventually are released, others are killed. One […]

Islamist and Jihadist as Iraq Education Minister In his memoirs, US Civil Administrator of Iraq, Paul Bremer, expressed delight that when his appointed Interim Governing Council selected cabinet ministers, they avoided the American “red lines,” which included a demand that the minister of education not be an “Islamist” so as to protect the interests of […]

At least 80 Dead, with Students Slaughtered No Security Chiefs Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki failed again on Sunday to appoint ministers of the interior and defense, two key security posts at a time of increased violence. The Supreme Council (hard line Shiites) is still trying to hold onto the ministry of interior (domestic policing), which […]

Khamenei: No Nuclear Weapon Program, No First Strike Goal is Energy Independence Abu Ghrayb, Haditha Weaken US Human Rights Claims The US media presented only a snippet from the speech of Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei of Iran on Sunday, in which he threatened to damage oil supplies to the West if the US militarily attacked […]

Nearly 30 Dead in Basra Bombing, 62 Wounded Political violence in the Iraqi Civil War left 44 dead on Saturday in an arc that stretched from the far south to the northeast of the country. In Basra, guerrillas used a car bomb to kill 28 persons (according to late reports) and wound 62. The bomber […]